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Staying hydrated while traveling

It’s even more important to drink a decent enough amount of water while you are traveling than when you are home. It can be complicated in certain places, but obviously your body will function much better and you’ll be happier if you manage to meet your hydration needs while traveling.

In one sense this might seem like a silly topic, but there are some aspects of this you might not consider before you set out on your first round the world adventure, so we’ll go over some of that here.

Bottled water is everywhere

This is one of the nicer surprises that some travelers get hit with while they are traveling in third world countries in particular. However, this doesn’t mean that your problems are all solved. The good news is that since drinking water is such a fundamental need for all travelers and locals alike, you’ll probably never have to look too hard to find large and usually cold bottles of water.

More good news comes with the fact that it’s usually quite cheap. Unlike, say, iPods, which tend to be even more expensive in remote areas, water tends to be cheap in all by the most hidden regions. If you are going to a hot area it’s likely that every hotel, restaurant, and shop you see will happily sell you 1-liter bottles of good drinking water for US$1 or sometimes less.

The problem with bottled water

Okay, so it’s not a problem with the bottled water, but with the bottles. Unfortunately, many of these second and third world countries that don’t have good drinking water from the tap and who have to rely on bottled water for everything, also do a very poor job at recycling and even waste collection. I’ve been on many train journeys in places like this, and I’ve seen windswept areas far from towns that have literally thousands of empty plastic water bottles blown into piles at the sides of roads and other barriers. Think twice about adding to that. Of course you’ll want to properly dispose of your empties, but it’s also good to share a big bottle with friends, or keep it in your room between drinks, rather than use 4 smaller bottles throughout the day. This is a serious problem, so try your best to minimize your impact.

Alternative solutions in areas with good tap water

In most developed countries around the world the tap water is drinkable and safe, even if it isn’t as tasty as you might like. Some people use this as an excuse to live on bottled water, but this is really something you should try to get over. I always travel with a Platypus 1 Liter Water Bottle, which now cost around $8 at camping stores. It weighs basically nothing, and rolls up to almost nothing when it’s empty, and yet it will hold one liter of tap water whenever you need it.

I prefer to usually keep it in my hotel or hostel room, and have at least a liter before I leave for the day, and then another when I get back in the evening. It’s tough plastic so you can use it hundreds of times without springing a leak, and you’ll be keeping all those empty bottles out of the garbage in the process. Bottled water tends to be strangely expensive in areas where the tap water is also pretty good, so this thing will save you quite a bit of money over time as well.

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